Still here
by Elisha Silverpine
Summary: The loss of your loved one isn't something that can be easily gotten over. But it can be done. Slowly, painfully, but possible. Vivesha. Short chapters.
1. Denial

**Title:** Still here

 **Genre(s):** Angst

 **Summary:** The loss of your loved one isn't something that can be easily gotten over. But it can be done. Slowly, painfully, but possible. Vivesha. Short chapters.

 **Tracks to listen to while reading: Song:** Still here, by digital dreamers; **Track:** Fairy Tail theme (sad)

 **Authors notes at the end of chapter.**

* * *

 **Denial**

Numbness.

A strange, particular numbness is what he feels as he walks to his car. No one speaks. None of the members so much as whisper a syllable and to the outsider observing the surface, they all seem to be aloof and unaffected. As though the death of their teammate is just a normal occurrence.

The numbness masks something building inside Vivek. Something he cannot describe with words. It's unpleasant and heavy and he wants it _off him_ , he wants it to _go away and please just let this all be a bad dream, please just tell me she's playing a grotesque prank please tell me she's alive and resting and will come back please come back PLEASE_.

His movements are mechanical and stiff and he seems to operate in a dream as he drives his car into the road to his home. The scene at the hospital keeps playing in his head and just _refuses_ to be replaced by anything other than her glowing face and the smile that she'd worn the day before and he doesn't know which hurts him more, her lively smile or her lifeless shock.

 _Tasha, will you..._

 _Will I what? Speak up Vivek, I don't speak mumbling!_

Out the windows he can see people laughing and smiling, children wrapped up in innocent revelry, couples blushing and smiling sappily and caught up in their own littles world and something inside him wants to scream at them.

 _"_ _Mu...mujhe...zyada...zyada waqt nahi hai..."_

The world is muted and all he hears is his own heartbeat and his heavy breathing as he turns right. And her voice, Tasha's voice alternating between pleasure and desperation, which his mind simply refuses to reject.

 _Will you be my girlfriend?_

 _...it's about time you asked!_

 _"_ _Nahi...nahi jaana hai mujhe...nahi jaana-"_

Before he knows it, he's stopped the car and finds himself walking to his door, fumbling slowly in his pocket to catch the solitary house key placed there, unlocking the door and opening it to silence and darkness.

His phone keeps pinging, notifying him of text messages. He pulls it out, barely registering the sound of his shut door and unlocks it to see them. They're all condolence messages, saying how sorry they are, how sad he must be feeling, how terrible it was and how she's in a better place and other things, other meaningless, empty words.

He trudges up the stairs, the pressure in his chest feeling heavier by the second. He wants to cast it off, to throw it up, to cut it out, ANYTHING to just remove it. He opens the bedroom door, needing to sit down somewhere. He sinks into the bed, trying to make out what he's doing when he sees her picture sitting on the bedstand.

He clutches the framed picture in his hand, his gaze never leaving her innocent and carefree smile, the sparkle in her eyes. As he continues to look at the expression of happiness and hope, something inside him snaps.

When Tarika comes by to check on him, she sees him cradling his head in his palms, emitting huge, wracking sobs, Tasha's picture lying a few feet away, the glass all cracked and shattered.

* * *

 **If you guys took the time to read my bio, you'd have noticed the reason for my hiatus. If not...**

 **A close friend of mine passed away in an accident a couple of months back. Ten days later, my grandfather too passed away. There's a difference between reading about grief and actually experiencing it.**

 **Tasha's death reminds me a great deal about my friend's death;** ** _both_** **were accidents, and both happened suddenly and without warning. It took a while for me to truly get over it, so I can imagine how it must have felt for Vivek. Kind of macabre, me drawing inspiration from that, but...**

 **This story is dedicated to my friend and my grandfather. The chapter is dedicated to Originals143 and Andy.**

 **Thank you for reading.**


	2. Anger and bargaining

**Title:** Still here

 **Genre(s):** Angst

 **Summary:** The loss of your loved one isn't something that can be easily gotten over. But it can be done. Slowly, painfully, but possible. Vivesha.

 **Tracks to listen to while reading:** Never meant to belong (Anger), Soundscape to Ardor (Bargaining)

* * *

 **Anger**

He cannot stop thinking about her face in the hospital.

Her panicky, desperate look keeps invading his dreams, his nightmares, _his waking moments_. He closes his eyes and he can clearly hear her frantic pleas to stay with them.

It's all he can do to hold on to himself and not scream at the doctor as he murmurs a hasty sorry for the loss because _you are a doctor. You should have saved her. Why didn't you try better? Why couldn't you save her? Why?!_

It hurts, it hurts so goddamn much when he looks at Abhijeet sir and red-hot anger flows through his veins because _you were there sir, and you didn't reach her. Why didn't you save her? Why didn't you do anything?!_

And when he sees her body, her lifeless body lying there, the shocked expression frozen on her face, a feeling of fury and sorrow flows through him. _You promised me. You promised me you'd be with me for life. Don't you always say that you never broke your promises? Don't you always tell me that? Why break one now, huh? Why?!_

And he hates it. He hates himself for feeling angry with Abhijeet sir and that doctor and Tasha because they did all that they could do, but a part of him still wants to scream at them for not _doing enough_ and causing him and everyone else sorrow.

* * *

 **Bargaining**

 _He's back in the hospital again. There's no one else except for him and Tasha, who's lying on the bed again. The oxygen mask is on her face as well as the various tubes connecting her to the apparatus trying to maintain life in her body._

 _She's alive. She's still wounded and toeing the line separating life and death but she's still alive for now. And she looks at him with a questioning expression._

What will you do?

 _Her lips have not moved, but he can hear the words perfectly._

What would you do to bring me back?

 _Anything, he says desperately. I'd do anything._

 _His mind has constructed fantasies of this moment, a world where she miraculously survives, a world where the doctor says that he can save her life, a world where she is still alive._

 _A world where everything is happy, perfect and a complete illusion._

What would you do?

 _I'd give up my life for you, he says with conviction, I'd give up anything for you._

 _But she seems to frown, a sad frown as if she's dissatisfied._

You wouldn't. _She seems to say sadly,_ you don't have it in you.

 _Don't go! He screams, but she is already fading away in front of him, even as he tries to grab any part of her._

He wakes up, the unspoken words on his lips.

 _DON'T LEAVE ME!_

* * *

 **Extremely short chapter, I know. But it was the best I could do for this one, given that I'd experienced very little of this myself.**

 **And to the guest who thinks the story is boring...mate. This is an angst fic dealing with death. It will not be some Bollywood cliché story with Jag Soona Soona Lage playing in the background. Not sorry about that.**

 **(On a side note, anime soundtracks are really addictive, ne? Especially the sad ones. Try listening to 'Will of the Heart'.)**


End file.
